At last, a corn report

I have not been very diligent about posting corn reports this season.  Part of the problem is that I have adopted a new crossing point for Snelling which includes an approach along Larpenteur.  My former route followed Roselawn and took me directly adjacent to the corn field.  For some unknown reason today I set out to ride Roselawn up to Snelling.  I got one of my best looks of the year at the corn field.

It appears that I have missed something.

*sigh*

It is barely still August but it is still August and August is a summer month.  We had breakfast outside on the deck this morning and everyone put a jacket on.  So today was a coolish summer day, temperatures in the 70s with a fresh breeze.  It was very pleasant, a very nice day.

The breeze was almost completely from the south so I angled off in an angle mostly southerly and ended up a place I haven't been for a while.  I took my sit down here.

What I liked about that scene was the wide variety of man made objects in the frame.  Those closest stones are limestone, the obelisk and the other stones further away are granite.  There is a steel electric power transmission line tower center frame, very new age technology.  Then some tall office towers and over to the right two churches, the one farthest away being the local Cathedral.  I learned in France that our big church is a cathedral and the biggest church in Minneapolis is a basilica because this one is the bishop's church, the one in Minneapolis has no bishop.  I learned that on a day when I visited Notre Dame Cathedral and the Basilica of Saint Denis.

I passed near the Fairgrounds on my route home and came upon this enterprising citizen reacting to the large decrease in number of people wishing to park in his neighborhood this week by posting a substantial decrease in his usual rates.

The guy with the dogs is not the homeowner, the homeowner is sitting in the shade, you can see his right foot peeking out from behind the bush frame right.

I felt strong but compared to lately but I am quite slow.  I was riding along next to the lake when I noticed that I was completely not gaining on a father riding with his two early grade school age children.  I wasn't really falling back from them but I was definitely not gaining.

This one is located at the local branch of the county library.

I went through and counted again and cross referenced my published photos to the informational website.  Sixteen down, four to go.

Got rained on in the last mile

 I am a little uncertain about this new blogger.  As usual, change is hard, it isn't so much that there are things I don't like.  It is more that things are no longer where I expect to find them.

*sigh*

And then there is the whole return key dropping me down two lines instead of one.  After a lifetime of return- return to start a new paragraph blogger wants me to get used to using only a single return.

I am a little uncertain.

We did not have Tropical Storm Laura but we did have a pretty intense if short burst of rain this morning and it finally broke the string of too hot too humid heat advisory days that has dominated the last half of August.  There was still a 30 percent chance of more for this afternoon but that was a 70 percent chance of none and it was starting to be too long since I had ridden.  Also, yesterday was the scheduled first day of the Fair and I wanted to ride by over there.  The Fair Food Parade was having another go today and I was interested to see if the smells of the Fair might be present near the grounds.

No.

I was trying to keep an eye on the northwestern sky which was where the incoming weather figured to announce itself but I got distracted by this bench.

I took my mid-ride sitdown there and made the mistake of leaning back.

That turned out to be way comfortable and with a pretty pleasant day going on and a four way stop right in front of me providing plenty of entertainment I lingered perhaps longer than I should have with a 30 percent chance of rain.

And for the first time this year I got caught.  The first drop was just outside a mile from home and after that the rain came on fairly rapidly.  It was raining by the time I got home, not a very hard rain but also clearly not a sprinkle.

So that's one more intrinsic bicycling experience checked off this year's list.

The rain didn't last long and later I went back out and recycled to finish out the number of miles that I had been hoping to ride.

This rose is the second closest to my house.

I think it is interesting that they finished some major tree pruning there this year.  We have done some pruning ourselves in our yard but our tree work was storm related.

State Fair food

It might have been too hot today but I got a morning text from our beloved dafter detailing a 22 mile bicycle ride.  I did my part and boosted the family total to 40.  When I started I thought it might be more than that but it was too hot.

I was riding down Larpenteur getting warmed up and idly planning my ride when I spotted this while passing the Larpenteur entrance.

I am well familiar with the usual annual routine of the closing of the Grounds just before the actual Fair kicks off but no Fair will be held in this year of COVID so this caught me a little by surprise.  I decided to ride around to the front entrance on Snelling to see if I could learn a little more.

And I could.

I had, of course, heard about this food parade thing but I had not realized that they were going to close the Grounds.

I spotted these on the way home and was much reminded of flowers I have observed at about this time of year in other years when I was riding in Michigan.

The blossoms are very similar in appearance to cardinal flowers so they may be related but they seem very unlikely to be the actual flowers I have seen growing wild in the ditch somewhere on I believe 168th Street.

It's an interesting yard design concept, some red flowers planted next to but not completely surrounding a boulder and then encircled by a stick in the ground white wire fence.

Today's rose is another of the ones located at a hotel.

By my count, thirteen down, seven to go.

Circle of life

 It was hot but not oppressive today.  The temperature topped out in the lower half of the 80s and while some humidity reappeared it was hot but not oppressive.

I tried a ride and frankly, it was hard, but that isn't the part of the day that led to that post title.

I felt strong enough to try for someplace new and so I ventured down into the big city just to our south.  My turnaround point ended up being the Saint Clair Broiler.

Oops.  That corner has changed quite a bit all of a sudden.  But all the way to Saint Clair is a pretty significant ride to the south.

I took my sit down at the Bell Tower.

Donated by the classes of 1927 and 1928.

As usual, the campus is gorgeous this time of year but largely deserted.  There were a couple of student age young men frisbeeing and a few others walking but largely deserted.

I didn't get to any lakes today but I did get to two college campuses.  After riding through the second one I was starting to feel the heat and really I was just looking for the easiest way back across the railroad tracks and a short route home.  I almost passed through the neighborhood without stopping to take a look.

But finally I realized my error.  I really shouldn't get this close without taking a look so I detoured (only two blocks) to take a look at the tree we planted about 37 years ago.

It does look to me like Opal's curtains are still there but this is a landmark day for me, a clear message.  Nothing lasts forever.

I was getting close to home when I spotted something you just don't see very often any more, especially not out on the boulevard.

I have said previously that several of these roses are at hotels.  Here is one at a Hilton.

I wonder if those shrubs are meant to be the unhealthy looking shade of orange of the ones on the left or the more vibrant green of the couple just behind the potted plant-like object.

Crooked number to the lake

Dew point.  Day after day of pretty hot and extremely humid.  Day after day of middays only fit for mad dogs.  Finally, today was nice again.

It had been several days since I had been out but not quite long enough to lose what little fitness and strength I have gradually been trying to build.  I took my longest ride of the year, posting for the first time a crooked number.

It takes a crooked number ride to get to the lake I saw today.  Here is a look at Lake Vadnais from the top of the hill on Rice Street.

Two new roundabouts, a couple of new multi-level apartment buildings, some new streets.

The top of the hill was as close as I got,  I was already a long way from home and I didn't fancy climbing back up that hill before riding what shaped up to be a couple of miles too far to get back to my garage.

Instead of an out and back I rode a true loop route, outwards over to a route parallel to Rice Street, then back to the west and home along Hamline.  The road past Lake Owasso is closed for construction so I followed the detour and was rewarded to discover all new pavement along a route that has always disappointed me with narrow shoulders of broken pavement strewn with road debris and trash.  Today was smooth pavement and a good three feet of shoulder outside the fog line.

I soon passed what had previously been my most northern point this year.  This is the playground of a church/private school.  It is private property, they are well within their rights to close what appears to be a pretty inviting place to play.

On the other hand they were holding a wedding in the church.  I, of course, have no clue what it looked like inside but the groups of people gathered outside need to try a little harder.

It was a gorgeous day, I made it home just fine, thank you.

Lots of the roses are outside of hotels, this one looks to me more like a mushroom than like a rose.

With today's ride I have now ridden more miles on this bicycle than I have ridden on FirstLOOK.  I am certain that this means that this is now my bike and that there still some more miles to be ridden before the snow flies.

Riding after the storm

We had really spectacular thunder and lightning overnight.  The thunder just rolled on and on without break as the light in the sky flashed and flashed.  For us here we got less rain than some other nearby areas so the flood threat never materialized here.  We did get the light show.

And we got the break in the weather.  After several days of hot and sultry we today got just a nice summer day.

So bicycling broke out again.  The light wind was mostly west with a little north.  Most of my ride routes are predominately north or south so northwest wind usually means a ride to the north.  But it is August, a month when I usually lose access to the Fairgrounds.  Now is the time when the benches usually start to appear.  I decided to head over there, slightly south, to see what I could see.

Clearly something has been going on as I came across several spots which featured traffic furniture.
I was puzzled, being under the impression that there were not going to be any activities on the grounds.  The Fair has been cancelled and so has the big car shows.  Even the State Fair Criterium series (Thursday bicycle races) has been cancelled.

Well, not everything.

I guess it makes sense, they are having a drive through food court sort of deal later this month so I guess dinosaurs can also be driven past with appropriate social distancing.

I was also pleased to find that the Cattle Barn time and temperature display has at long last been restored to working condition.

See?  A nice summer day, 74 at 2:30.

Eventually I left the grounds and checked out one other usual staple which I had not previously visited this summer, the exotic flora block.

To get there I rode past the Como Avenue reconstruction at the end opposite of the end I had previously seen.  The street is torn up all the way to Hamline.

Today's rose is in a pretty spot in a city park, on the shores of Lake McCarron.

That's as far east as you can get and still be in Roseville.

Recycled cycles

We received a post card informing us of a public hearing concerning a project involving a public ditch.  Hmmm, says I.  What could this be?  I checked the website, learned a bunch of stuff and set out on my bicycle to do some personal investigation.

But first I came to this.

The lady who lives in that house is, like most of us, suffering some quarantine fatigue so she came right out from around the corner of the house to engage in some conversation.  I suggested to her that she is recycling her cycles, which amused her.

She said, come on back tomorrow, I may have some veggies in the cart.  So that was fun.

I rode over to where the public ditch project is and ended up stopping for a mid-ride sit down near one of the Twin Lakes.

So the ditch was constructed between 1906 and 1908.  Much of this state and most others is heavily ditched.  When European settlers arrived here they did not find as much dry and arable land as now exists.  The change was that those folks drained all the swamps and lots of small ponds.  Here in a heavily urbanized area most of the ditch has beenl "buried" which means that the ditch now runs through underground pipes.  We have a stretch here of about a half mile in length which is located in an area which was occupied by trucking terminals and because trucking terminals do not depend much on aesthetics is still above ground.  The trucking companies have gone away.  Some redevelopment is going on.  As part of the plan our city has proposed putting the ditch into a pipe, a big one, 84 inches in diameter, while creating green space on the area now occupied by the ditch.

I was not aware of this above ground ditch (I haven't lived here long enough I guess) so I wanted to get a look at it.  This is relevant to me because I live near the upstream end of the ditch which means that rainwater runoff from my yard is carried away and out of my town by this ditch.

What follows then is several views of what the ditch looks like now.

Here is where the ditch first goes underground, near Fairview and County Road C.  This photo taken facing north.

Actually, at my back and south across County Road C there is a slough which I was only vaguely aware of.  I strongly suspect that there is a pipe coming from that body of water which is part of the ditch but that part IS underground so this is where the above ground segment begins.  It seems to me to already strongly resemble green space.

The ditch runs through an area of mostly warehouses, a remnant of the trucking industry but considerably reduced in size.  This is near Dohrn.  Still looking pretty green.

Just across Terrace from there appears something the project proposal calls Oasis Pond.  I am familiar with that body of water from having coached a softball team which played its games at Oasis Park.

This area shows lots of us, a fairly well traveled looking path near the bottom of the ravine.  This is approximately across the street from Pizza Luce.

And the start of the first segment not proposed for burial, north of County Road C2, near Northwestern.  A short time after this the ditch drains into Little Lake Johanna which is connected by a final ditch segment to Lake Johanna.

So the rainwater from my yard drains into Lake Johanna.

Here is today's rose, another one pretty strongly in the blue family.

That one is located at a construction company headquarters just across the street from the warehouses near the ditch.

You lie August

Split timber all over no wonder distemper.

Relevant because today was very unlike July, the first time this season that the day featured a preview of what is to come.  Not enough sun and not enough heat, a really very October like day.

The W word thing is coming.

It was windy but I had not ridden in a couple of days and I felt strong.  I got farther north than I have been recently, all the way to the top of the hill in Shoreview.

The tops of the hills is where they put the water towers.  The sky off frame left of this photo featured an even darker looking group of clouds.  And not even enough blue for a Dutchman's pair of pants.

Having gotten that far north I swung past this extremely underappreciated and under photographed body of water on the return trip.

Lake Emily.

I felt strong and I thought I was going to ride a couple of extra miles today, intending for a new longest ride of the year.  I planned as I neared home to turn off the direct path and ride a southerly two mile loop along familiar and often traveled streets.  When I came to the intersection where I needed to turn left to initiate this detour I was deterred by a car approaching from behind me.  I don't like riding across in front of cars.  I always prefer going behind cars, it being imperatively obvious that fewer bicyclists are killed by cars going backwards than are killed by cars going forward.

Anyway, I missed my turn and before I knew it I was home.

Roses are still blue, at least they were a couple of days ago when I took this photo.

That one is in front of a nearby credit union.